Sit Ins With Digital Strangers

And how to have sex with your friends...

Hello friends, Romans, and Readers! I am coming at ya from the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia. Philly has a vibrant LGBTQ+ history and community and I am very excited to get to spend some time here. Read on ahead for:

• Remembering Nex Benedict

• The Dewey's Restaurant Sit-Ins 

• All of Us Strangers

• In Person Vs. Digital Conversations 

• How to Handle Sex With Your Friends

As some of you may have heard, a nonbinary high school student, Nex Benedict, was killed earlier this month. Nex was a 16-year-old, genderfluid student at Owasso High School in Oklahoma. They were a straight-A student who enjoyed "reading, art, their cat Zeus, creating new recipes, and playing video games like Minecraft and ARK." In early 2023, Nex became the subject of intensive bullying for being gender nonconforming. After a year of this bullying, on February 7th, Nex was attacked by three older girls who beat them "so badly that bruises formed around their eyes, and hit their head against the bathroom floor." Nex was taken to the hospital, but the school did not call an ambulance. Nex was then discharged that evening and went home. They "went to sleep on February 7th complaining of head pain, their mother told The Independent. They collapsed and were taken back to Bailey Medical Center, where they were later pronounced dead." Many have drawn parallels to Matthew Shepard, who was beaten and left for dead tied to a fence in Wyoming in 1998. 

I write about Nex to keep everyone aware of what the climate is like in this country for LGBTQ+ people and, especially, LGBTQ+ youth. After Nex's death, calls to crisis hotlines from kids in Oklahoma rose 300%. These kids are terrified that someone else will beat them to death simply because of who they are and how they express themselves. And it's not getting better. The rights of trans youth have been increasingly under attack for the past few years, and now those same attacks are coming for trans adults and all members of the LGBTQ community. Just last week, the Governor of Tennessee signed a bill allowing public officials to refuse marriages if they go against their beliefs. The law took effect immediately. Anti-LGBTQ+ politicians have a newfound confidence in their ability to draft laws against those whom they see as morally corrupt. So please, please do two things for me. One, if someone tells you they're trans or nonbinary, respect their pronouns and name. Or if you see someone who looks gender nonconforming, compliment them on how they look. Spread kindness to these folk whose very existence is an act of dangerous defiance. And second, get politically engaged this year. I'll be including lots of resources as the year goes on since it is an election year, but to start, I'm including a link to Oath, a company founded by a friend of mine that changes the way we interact with elections and election donations. It's an incredible platform, and if you're feeling helpless or frustrated about the state of politics in this country, I'd strongly recommend getting info from its founder and my friend Brian. You can follow him on Instagram or subscribe to his Substack.

 Six years after the Cooper Do-nuts Riot of 1959 and four years before Stonewall, Philadelphia had its own protest for LGBTQ rights. This one was tamer than the two surrounding it but potentially even more subversive. During the 1960s, Dewey's Restaurant was a popular haunt for young Philadelphians, including many who identified as LGBTQ. Dewey's provided a place for these social outliers to be themselves as most other establishments in the area had signs saying "FA**OTS STAY OUT" and others to such effects. But then, in early 1965, Dewey had a change of heart and decided to implement a new policy stating that they would not serve homosexuals, masculine women, feminine men, or persons wearing nonconformist clothing. Naturally, this proclamation did not go over well, and three unidentified teenagers led a group of 150 protesters to Dewey's for a sit-in on April 25th, 1965. The three teens who organized it were arrested, but this only galvanized the movement, and a second sit-in was held a week later. Dewey's reversed its policy shortly after. 

The Janus Society, a Philly-based homophile organization, was instrumental in helping get the word out about the sit-ins and capitalizing on the momentum afterward. They circulated over 1500 flyers throughout the area between the sit-ins to get higher attendance. The sit-ins differed from the other LGBTQ+ protests of the time because they were not interested in propriety or appearances. Many protests of the time required men to wear suits and women to wear dresses as they picketed or protested. Gay organizers believed that they had to appear as respectable members of society in order to be taken seriously, but this helped unite members of the LGBTQ+ community around freedom of expression. Unfortunately, Dewey's and the building it was in no longer exist. Dewey's was replaced by Little Pete's restaurant, and then in 2017, the building was demolished to make way for a luxury hotel. But thanks to both the rebellious nature of activists and the calm nature of policymakers, we've been able to gain the rights we have today. 

Last Thursday, Casey and I watched All of Us Strangers, a new, beautiful gay film that just dropped on Hulu. I'd been following the movie ever since I saw the trailer last fall, but I couldn't find a theatre showing it in any of the cities I was in at the right times. Its niche subject meant that it had a modest theatrical release around the country, so I had to wait until it dropped on the small screen. It was beautifully well worth the wait. 

The plot follows Adam (Andrew Scott), a struggling screenwriter, and his budding relationships with Harry, a man who lives in his building. But even more than the relationship with Harry (Paul Mescal), the film follows Adam's relationships with his parents, who died when he was 12. He takes a train to his childhood home and has conversations with both his parents, who are younger than he is in the present day. What follows are beautiful scenes that explore the conversations we wish we could have with those who have left us. It almost becomes a time travel movie as Adam has a conversation with his mom, who only remembers the 80s. What follows is a humorous and touching scene where she conveys her worries about him being 'a homosexual', and he explains to her how the world has changed. The film never tries to explain how these ghosts work or justifies them; it just forces you to accept that this is the way the story is being told.

It is not quite the movie I thought it would be, but I can't explain more without giving too much away. I will say that it is a bit slow but is confident in its existence as an art piece. The shots are slow and pensive, and the colors are gorgeously crafted in every frame. It's directed by Andrew Haigh, whose 2011 film Weekend is also a beautifully intimate gay meditation on relationships. So if you're looking for a pensive, gorgeous evening, I'd recommend you give it a watch. 

 This was going to be a musing about the importance of letter writing, but as I was thinking about that, it morphed into the concept that sometimes, in-person communication isn't the best medium. This is antithetical to a lot of what we're told. Oftentimes, we are told that the respectful way to deliver important or hard news is to do it in person, no matter what. I bucked that trend when I came out by doing it all by text. Something I still think about to this day. When I was trying to figure out how to come out, I kept feeling as though I was going to vomit up the words. These urges to blurt them out would come over me, stronger and stronger with each new one, and I'd get too nervous and think, "It's okay at some point the urge will be so powerful, I'll have to say it." And one day, it was; I just happened to be driving home with about an hour left, so I pulled over, texted both my parents that I was gay, and continued on my drive. I feel strange about it to this day, as though it was a cowardly way to do it, but I also think that it gave my parents the space to process it on their own (although they almost thought it was a joke). And this is something I reflect on a lot. 

When I need to have a particularly important or challenging conversation with someone, I tend to write a letter about it. I like to sit with my thoughts and my emotions as I write them down, then go back and reread them to see if my words are being driven by emotion, honesty, logic, etc. It allows me to make sure that I am saying exactly what I want to as honestly as possible. And it gives the other person the space to process all the information on their own without feeling obligated to respond in a certain way because I am sitting in front of them. It's like the emotional equivalent of opening presents in front of the gift giver. Now, I'm not saying that every important conversation should happen this way, but that maybe there are additional ways to have conversations that are outside the norms we are told. But even still, I do grapple with the thoughts of "is this the respectful way, or am I just taking the easy way?" 

What do you think? Would you rather tell someone difficult news in person or in writing? And would you rather receive difficult news in person or in writing? Or does it maybe depend on the type of news? 

Dear gb: platonic sex with your gay friends (those who are single or non-monogamous, anyone willing to have 'sanctioned' sex with you). Is it something that can actually work out? Is it really that simple? Or does one person always get feelings? How do you navigate sex with your gay friend group?

Dear friend: There are so many questions here, and they're all great. However, I do think that I am going to take this question and do a two-part answer this week and next week simply because there is so much here to unpack! 

There is the common generalization that gay men can have much more frequent, casual sex than their straight(er) counterparts. And for the most part, I do think that that's true. But I think it's true for a myriad of complicated reasons that come from our history. I know I touched on this last week, but I think our fascination with aesthetics and our propensity towards casual sex both come from how hidden our sex lives had to be throughout history. There may be biological reasons, too, but I'm less interested in those because a) I'm not a biologist and b) with how complicated gender and sex can be, I'd rather explore the sociological reasons. Historically, men have always been criminalized more for sex with other men than women with women. Two women had an 'easier' time living together as 'roommates' than men, and so men were forced to satisfy their sexual urges in secretive, public places. This forced us to create relationships where intimacy was a literal threat to our safety. The more details the man you were having secret sex with knew about you, the more power he had to destroy your life. Fellow Travelers displays this in a really honest and brutal way. And while this secrecy has changed, the remnants are still with us. 

This hidden secrecy of the 50s and 60s led to the sexual liberation of the 70s and then the tragedy of the 80s. It's an understatement to say AIDS changed gay sex forever. Sex went from being a liberating freedom to a mortal threat, which we are just coming out of with the advent of PrEP and more ways to think about safe sex. But through this complicated history, we've continued to have more casual sex and a higher number of sexual partners than our heteronormative counterparts. 

This proclivity towards casual sex has accelerated our conversations about open relationships faster than other subsets of couples. So, while we may be 'leading the way' in blurring the lines between sex and friends, it's just because we've had more time to do so. Also, I believe it's much easier for gay men to engage in this casual sex than hetero couples because of the absence of gender norms. There is a much bigger sociological hurdle to overcome within male-female couples and so much of that is rooted in patriarchy and sexism. But now that we've explored all of that backstory, we get to your question. I think (and know) that platonic sex with your friends can absolutely work out. It may not always be simple though since everyone's feelings are just as complex as we all are. So come back next week to read how you can navigate these relationships, how to handle feelings when they arise, and how to keep having sex with your friends. 

And with that cheeky sendoff, I leave you this week. The winter has been wearing on me, so I hope you do a little self-care this week.

All my love, Aidan